Access

Books and Arts

Nature 446, 731 (12 April 2007) | doi:10.1038/446731a; Published online 11 April 2007

Open Innovation Challenges

naturejobs

The birth of science

Peter Dear1

BOOK REVIEWEDThe Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1210–1685

by Stephen Gaukroger

Oxford University Press: 2006. 576 pp. £35, $65

Why do we look to science to guide our lives in the modern world? That most of us do so is manifest from an examination of the cultural and political history of the past century.